Throughout a wintry December, media weather people were throwing around arctic adjectives:
freezing,
frigid,
bone-chilling.

Now that January has arrived and the real cold is here, they’re out of adjectives.

If 10 degrees is
bone-chilling, what’s minus 10?
World-ending?

A day such as today points out the need to conserve adjectives. Effective synonyms for
cold are finite. If you waste
frigid on a brisk December day, you’re stuck with
hibernal when the temperature really plummets.

To help avoid the problem, I’ve created a Local Guide to Cold-Weather Adjectives — with
temperature ranges for each word, plus behaviors corresponding to those temperatures.

Follow it, and you’ll always know exactly how cold it is:

• Chilly: 40 to 44 degrees

Expensive airline tickets to Florida begin sounding like a bargain.

• Brisk: 35 to 39 degrees

Strippers switch to their winter pasties.

• Frosty: 31 to 34 degrees

Abercrombie & Fitch catalog models petition the company for special permission to accumulate
body fat.

• Freezing: 25 to 30 degrees

The least-compassionate state legislators become sluggish as low temperatures affect their
coldblooded, reptilian bodies.